1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for identifying an object having non-specific outer boundaries, such as a leukocyte in blood, a leukemia, a microorganism in water, the ground, or an animal body, as well as a protein deposited from a solution, as utilized in the medical field.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There has been proposed as prior art an apparatus for identification of an object having a non-specific outer boundary, such as a leukocyte. In this apparatus, a leukocyte can be tracked by utilizing the difference in chromatic dispersion from a rhodocyte in blood containing a leukocyte and a rhodocyte in microphotometry. The microphotometric image is analyzed by using digital image processing technology, in view of the measured area of a nucleus and circumference of the nucleus, and areas of cytoplasm and cytoplasmic granules, and further, data on color of the nucleus and cytoplasmic granules as characteristic parameters. The leukocyte can be identified logically in view of such characteristic parameters.
This type of prior art apparatus utilizes digital image processing theory which provides the characteristic parameters of the image. Since the amount of data needed to be processed is large, employing a relatively inexpensive computer will result in a significantly slow processing rate. Consequently, a relatively expensive computer exhibiting high performance must be used to provide a sufficiently high rate of processing.
Parameters with regard to configurations of a cell nucleus, cytoplasm and cytoplasmic granules are vague so that the particular identification method depends largely on the condition of the images to be analyzed, resulting in a large number of incorrect analyses.
Furthermore, in situations where one correctly identifies an object, images having significantly low contrast and structure are obtained so that the digital image processing, in many instances, does not afford characteristics that the human eye can distinguish.